Geologist says coal seam gas could have caused Qld fire

The Queensland government has lashed out at an environmental activist’s claims that a gas fire burning at an old coal exploration well is caused by coal seam gas (CSG) activities.

A bushfire was reported west of Dalby on Saturday, near Peabody Energy’s Wilkie Creek coalmine and Arrow Energy’s Daandine CSG project.

Firefighters extinguished the bushfire but a slow-burning gas fire is still flickering in an old test well drilled more than 30 years ago for coal exploration.

The president of the anti-CSG Lock the Gates Alliance, Drew Hutton, insists the company’s CSG activities are to blame. And an experienced geologist from Monash University says there’s a strong chance that this is the case.

The Minister for Natural Resources and Mines, Andrew Cripps, said Mr Hutton’s “constant” claims were unsubstantiated.

“Mr Hutton this morning labelled the Queensland government’s efforts to effectively deal with this situation as ‘absurd and irresponsible’,” Mr Cripps said in a statement.

“I wonder whether local community members in the Dalby area share his opinion when the absolute priority of the state government is to put public health and safety first.”

Mr Cripps said work would begin first thing on Wednesday to extinguish the slow-burning fire and seal the old well.

The operation could be delayed if it rains, he said.

Arrow Energy says it does not own the coal well and has denied the fire is linked to its CSG activities.

But Monash University engineer and geology expert Gavin Mudd disagrees.

He said CSG mining involves pumping out a lot of water to release the gas.

"By pumping out all that water, the ground water pressure drops allowing gas to start flowing in places it has never flowed in the past," Dr Mudd said.

"It could surface anywhere including from old coal wells.

"It beggars belief that companies fiddling with methane are trying to pretend there is no risk of gas leaks."

Mr Hutton said he'd seen the same phenomenon in the United States, where all 200 residents of Rawhide, Wyoming had to be evacuated after a shallow coal seam was dewatered.

"The gas started to move. It came up through cracks in the ground in the middle of town. Kids were actually lighting fires," he told ABC radio on Tuesday.

"This is the scenario we're looking at on the Western Downs."

He said the region was facing what he called a major occupational health and safety risk, with gas also recently seen bubbling to the surface of the Condamine River, and residents at Tara complaining of health issues blamed on escaping gas.

He said methane was colourless, odourless and tasteless and he was sure it was escaping unnoticed from many more pathways.

Dr Mudd said it was also possible gas bubbles found in the Condamine River in May were the result of CSG activities in the region.

"The industry doesn't have enough data to back up their claims it's not causing gas leaks," he said.

"Neither do opposing community groups but they don't have the multi-million-dollar budgets to do all the testing."

He said it didn't help that governments supported CSG without ever doing the science to clear the risks.

State governments also did not have the expertise any more to conduct necessary field tests, partly because they couldn't compete with the high wages mining companies offer scientists, he said.